Converting Carbon Dioxide To Gasoline

We are promoting a process that would convert carbon dioxide into diesel fuel and gasoline, while producing hydrogen for fuel cell production.

We propose to combine nuclear plants with coal plants that use pure oxygen combustion in the firebox to reduce the volume of stack gases. A scrubber would still be needed for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury (Selective Catalytic Reducer). The nuclear plant would be used to produce hydrogen via electrolysis (or high temperature electrolysis) or the sulfur-iodine cycle that would be piped away to produce fuel cells.

The oxygen from the electrolysis process would be piped to the coal plant for use in the firebox.

The hydrogen would also be mixed onsite with carbon dioxide from the coal plant stack in a water to gas shift to produce carbon monoxide, which would then be mixed with hydrogen using the gas to water shift in the Fischer-Tropsch process to produce a synthetic petroleum product (diesel fuel or gasoline).

These processes need very high temperatures of about 900 degrees Celsius.

Carbon dioxide would be used from the coal plant to make a vehicle fuel while an adjacent nuclear plant would produce hydrogen for fuel cell production and oxygen for the coal plant firebox.

The oxygen from the electrolysis would be used in the coal firebox to reduce the volume of emission gases by 80 percent, which represents nitrogen in the air.

There will be little to no CO2 emitted from the coal plant because the gas will be used to make vehicle fuel. There will be CO2 released from vehicle use but these emissions would occur anyway from vehicle use.

We are still studying the energy penalties and economics for these processes.